Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/102

86 panting as impatiently to be off as if "she" suffered with Lady Turnour.

No sooner was the tall, leather-clad figure out of sight than a crowd of small boys and youths pressed boldly round the handsome car. Her splendour was her undoing, for a plain, every-day sort of automobile might have failed to attract.

Laughing, jabbering patois, a dozen young imps forced their audacious attentions on the unprotected azure beauty. What was I, that I could defend her, left there as helpless as she, while her great heart throbbed under me?

It was easy to say "Allez-vous en—va!" and I said it, not once, but again and again, each time more emphatically than before. Nobody paid the slightest attention, however, except, perhaps to find an extra spice of pleasure in tormenting me. If I had been a yapping miniature lap-dog, with teeth only pour faire rire, I could not have been treated with greater disdain by the crowd. I glanced hastily round to see if Sir Samuel had not taken alarm; but, sitting beside his wife in the big crystal cage, he seemed blissfully unconscious of danger to his splendid Aigle. Instead, the couple looked rather pleased than otherwise to be a centre of attraction.

"Perhaps," I thought, "they're right, and these young wretches can work no real harm to the car. They ought to know better than I ⸺"

But they did n't; for before the thought could spin itself out in my mind, a gypsy-eyed little fiend of twelve or thirteen made a spring at the driver's seat. With a yelp of mischievous glee he proved his daring to his